Mobile devices such as handheld computing devices use an operating system (OS) to run various types of application software, commonly referred to as applications or apps. Applications are available through application distribution platforms, which are typically operated by the vendor of the OS such as APPLE, ANDROID, GOOGLE, WINDOWS. The user of the mobile device may subscribe to various types of information to be received by the applications as notifications. Applications receive notifications generated by a publisher associated with the application. The notifications can be received by periodically polling the publisher. Push notifications are initiated by the publisher and are sent immediately through an open connection.
The push notifications sent by the publisher are designed specifically for the OS of the mobile device. Thus, each application uses a separate notification interface for each mobile OS. Each application also has to register multiple security certificates with the different OS vendors. Therefore, if a publisher has ten applications, the publisher develops ten different interfaces and registers ten security certificates with each mobile OS vendor. This requires substantial infrastructure to generate multiple notifications and security certificates for each OS vendor as well as time, effort, and maintenance.